NATO PLANS MILITARY BUILDUP IN CAUCASUS

Antiwar.com News Articles
April 2, 2014 Wednesday 3:42 AM EST

by Jason Ditz

US military interest in Azerbaijan usually begins and ends with it
being on the border with Iran, but today NATO’s interest in the tiny
republic centers on its being along a border with Russia.

You can’t have a border with Russia these days, or in Armenia and
Moldova’s case be just kind of close to Russia, without NATO looking
to throw military assets[1] at you these days to ‘counter’ an imagined
Russian threat.

Moldova, which at least sort of borders Ukraine (tiny autonomous
Transnistria notwithstanding), is getting a NATO ‘liaison office,’
according to the reports, while Armenia is getting full-fledged
military exercises, and Azerbaijan is getting a defense rehaul aimed
at protecting its offshore oil and gas fields in the Caspian Sea.

While NATO has imagined a looming problem in Moldova over the status
of Transnistria, Russia has extremely cozy relations with both
Azerbaijan and Armenia, and the only hint of any military tension
for either Armenia or Azerbaijan in the region are with one another,
not with Russia.

Rather, NATO seems to be looking to use the fiction of an
‘expansionist’ Russia to engage in some military expansion of its own,
insinuating itself ever-deeper into Asia for no apparent reason beyond
just sticking it to Russia.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress